Alarming number of 10 to 16 year old pregnancies

SANTO DOMINGO. The International Alliance of Chaplaincy, an entity affiliated to the United Nations Organization (UN), presented a study that showed that just in the San Lorenzo de Los Mina Maternity Hospital they attended 1.275 pregnant girls between the ages of 10 and 16. Sandra Castillo, the National Director of Community Affairs, of the Alliance, said that the situation was similar at the Juan Pablo Pina Hospital in San Cristobal, where 1,611 children, also pregnant and also at similar ages, are attended each month.

“The number of pregnant girls is alarming. We in the Chaplaincy are very worried over this situation. Can you imagine a little girl being the mother of a little child? This cannot be!” she said.

Castillo called the situation alarming and called on the authorities and the business community to find solutions in order to avoid that this keeps spreading in the Dominican Republic.

She said that this situation will produce in the future, women in prostitution, drug addiction, alcoholism and other evils.

“Given the fact, we did a survey, including girls of executives that have girls that are 16 years of age that have been pregnant and that at the present time these mothers feel desperate,” she said.

She explained that this situation has forced these girls to go into the streets “and because of this we are going to start a campaign that seeks to avoid that this problem keeps spreading.” The campaign in question is called “Miss Schoolgirl 2014, everything has its moment”, which consists in electing a girl in a school (public or private) as the “Queen of Student Values and Beauty”.

In this sense, Clery de Marte said that with the campaign they are trying to avoid vulgarity, disproportionate sexuality and the thunderous incidence that punished the majority of the homes and communities.

The project seeks to build a house that will serve as a shelter for the pregnant girls and that have no homes to go to. For this the International Alliance of Chaplaincy is looking for the support of business and other sectors, such as the government.